Injuries to the hand through athletic activity, labor, or accident and post-operative healing involves tissue damage, pain, and swelling. To mitigate the pain and promote healing, temperature therapy is often used after surgery and in combination with other medical treatments such as in an orthopedic therapy programs and sports medicine programs. Temperature therapy is also used to treat degenerative conditions such as arthritis and inflammatory diseases and disorders.
Temperature therapy conventionally involves the application of heat or cold to tissue in an effort to heal and rehabilitate injuries such as bruises, sprains, or other trauma to bone, muscle, ligaments, tendons, and skin and to treat degenerative conditions and inflammatory diseases and disorders. In a cold application, a cold apparatus is applied to an affected area to diminish swelling and inflammation to resultantly reduce pain and promote healing of injured tissue.
In a heat application, a heated apparatus is applied to an affected area to loosen extremity tissue and joint tissue, such as muscles, ligaments and tendons. Application of heat promotes repair and healing by increasing the temperature of the affected area, thereby increasing the flow of blood and oxygen to the tissue and increasing respiration. In this manner, the application of heat serves to increase the range of motion and improve the flexibility in the patient's extremity, thus improving the functionality, comfort and performance of the injured or infirm hand or wrist.
Various devices are known in the pertinent art for delivering temperature therapy to the hand. Conventional temperature therapy devices are able to adequately provide a source of heat or cold but most are unable to uniformly deliver the temperature across the hand and therefore do not reach all injuries sufficiently. Conventional temperature therapy devices include ice packs and hot water bottles. Ice packs are typically used for the application of cold therapy and hot water bottles are used for the application of heat therapy. Ice packs, while adequately supplying a cold temperature, generally fail to do so in a uniform manner. Specifically, an ice pack is commonly a rigid body and as such does not conform to the generally complex contour of a human hand. Further, the conventional ice pack may not provide a uniform temperature to afflicted portions of the hand. In this regard, some areas may receive very cold temperatures while other areas remain out of contact with the ice pack altogether.
Hot water bottles, while adequately supplying heat to a treatment area, fail to do so in a uniform and convenient manner. While a hot water bottle generally includes a flexible outer shell, maintaining the outer surface of the bottle in contact with the hand is a difficult task. Specifically, because hot water bottles do not offer a way of selectively attaching the bottle to the hand, the patient is required to maintain the bottle in a static position to ensure that proper application of heat is achieved in a uniform manner. Further, because the hot water bottle is typically not able to wrap around the hand, it is difficult to apply heat to both sides of a hand at the same time.
It is well known that heat and cold pads are available for use in thermal therapy in place of the rigid cold pack and the cumbersome hot water bottle. While conventional heat and cold pads are typically flexible and thus better conform to the human hand than the aforementioned hot water bottle and ice pack, conventional heat and cold pads generally do not provide for a convenient method by which to apply a uniform thermal therapy treatment to an affected area. For example, while a heat and cold pad is commonly more flexible than a hot water bottle or an ice pack, conventional heat and cold pads do not provide an apparatus by which to selectively secure the pad to the hand. In this manner, conventional heat and cold pads suffer from the disadvantage of requiring the patient to maintain a constant pressure on the pack to ensure that the relationship of the pad to the hand is maintained. By requiring a patient to maintain a constant pressure on the thermal pack reduces the probability of a uniform distribution of therapy throughout the hand.
The known art also includes mitt or glove like devices for delivering a cold temperature to the hand. Such devices are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,935,157 and 6,164,413. These devices are not suitable for a wide range of hand sizes. Furthermore, these devices are not practical to pull over a severely injured or post-operative hand.
Therefore, a temperature therapy apparatus that wraps around the hand and is capable of supplying a uniform heat or cold therapy to the hand is desirable in the pertinent art. Further, supplying a temperature therapy apparatus having the ability to be selectively attached to left hands and right hands of various sizes is also desirable in the pertinent art.